


The Sting of a Wasp

by xxSparksxx



Series: And Then There Were Two [12]
Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 05:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16696789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxSparksxx/pseuds/xxSparksxx
Summary: “Ithurts,” she snaps. “Stop it!”“For God’s sake, Vera.” He drops the comb, and it lands in the water with barely a splash. “I’m doing the best I can,” he tells her. His voice is as sharp as hers, all raw edges and impatience, and on any other occasion she would appreciate that he’s working up a fine temper of his own. But now, though she can recognise it, she doesn’t care. She’s too frustrated, too wound up by her body’s frailties, to care that she might be poking a tiger. “Do you want me to do this, or not?”“Not if you can’t do it without hurting me,” she spits out. “As if I’m not sore enough already!”





	The Sting of a Wasp

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt given to me on tumblr: “Well, just take care of yourself then, if you don’t want me touching you.” It...grew on me. As this 'verse so often does.
> 
> Beta-read by mmmuse.

“That _hurts_ ,” Vera hisses through her teeth. She presses her forehead against her knees and fights the urge to lash out. The hot bath water laps at her skin, disturbed by her movement. Steam stings her eyes a little, and the curled up position she’s adopted is making her ribs hurt. 

“I’m almost done,” Philip murmurs. He strokes a hand down the back of her neck and across her shoulder. It should be soothing, but she’s too aggravated to let herself be soothed. Instead it feels ticklish and unwelcome.

“Be careful,” she says, waspishly. Philip is silent for a moment, his hand resting on her shoulder. Then he resumes his task, working a comb through her tangled hair. 

It has been three days since Vera was released from hospital, and she has to admit that she’s found it harder than she anticipated. The journey home, and then the violent confrontation with Philip, exhausted her and left her aching, and since then she has only got out of bed to use the toilet. Philip has brought her all her meals, and brought the radio upstairs for her, and fetched her newspapers and magazines. He’s tended her diligently, but made it absolutely clear that she is to do nothing but rest and recover. And Vera, still reeling from the revelation of his love and force of his anger over her actions, has acquiesced without much complaint. She knows he’s still angry, but she’s had no wish to bring it back to the surface. Her compliance has been an easy enough price to pay, to keep the peace and to give herself time to bask in his care. In his love.

Today, though, she has insisted on a bath. She’s had nothing but bed baths for weeks, and she longed to submerge herself in hot water, to let it warm her through and through and, hopefully, ease some of the ache in her ribs and abdomen. Philip had agreed reluctantly, and insisted on staying in the room with her. She hadn’t minded that, but she _did_ mind that it swiftly became clear that she couldn’t keep her arms raised for long enough to shampoo and comb her hair properly. Philip had offered his help; Vera had accepted. But she loathes the necessity of it, loathes needing to be helped, and the loathing has built quickly into unbearable frustration. 

Especially since it rapidly becomes clear that Philip is not accustomed to combing somebody else’s hair. And her hair has become particularly tangled after weeks of barely more than a cursory brush, so every stroke of the comb hits a knot and pulls at her scalp. It’s a stinging pain that shouldn’t bother Vera, especially after the last few weeks, but every sting makes her blood boil. It’s like a wasp at a picnic. One is nothing more than a nuisance; a collection of them is unbearable. She feels like she’s going to jump out of her skin in a minute, she’s so overflowing with irritation. She grits her teeth together and glowers at her knees. She hasn’t been so helpless since she was a child, and she _loathes_ it. 

The comb pulls at another knot, and instead of stopping, Philip keeps trying to draw the comb through her hair. Vera hisses again and tosses her head to make him stop. 

“It _hurts_ ,” she snaps. “Stop it!”

“For God’s sake, Vera.” He drops the comb, and it lands in the water with barely a splash. “I’m doing the best I can,” he tells her. His voice is as sharp as hers, all raw edges and impatience, and on any other occasion she would appreciate that he’s working up a fine temper of his own. But now, though she can recognise it, she doesn’t care. She’s too frustrated, too wound up by her body’s frailties, to care that she might be poking a tiger. “Do you want me to do this, or not?”

“Not if you can’t do it without hurting me,” she spits out. “As if I’m not sore enough already!” 

Philip mutters a curse and launches himself to his feet. Vera lifts her head and cranes around to look at him. His mouth is pulled into a scowl, and his eyes are dark and fierce. He’s skating alongside the edge of his temper, as she is of her own. Good, Vera thinks viciously. Good. She hates it when she’s the only one angry, when he meets her rage with calm implacability. Not that she’s raging now. Nor even, in truth, angry. It’s frustration and impatience and impotence all tangled up together. It’s four weeks of being an invalid finally taking its toll on her independent spirit. 

It’s a small thing, really, being unable to wash and comb her own hair. In the hospital it hadn’t mattered, the nurses had been there to help her with everything, but here, at home, it’s unbearable. It’s simply unbearable. 

And more than simply the limitation itself, it’s intolerable to be looked after by Philip, right now. Helping steady her as she walks to the bathroom, bringing her meals in bed, making sure she is well-entertained…those things she can accept from him. But this? No, she can’t bear his help for something like this, something so intimate as combing her hair. Not with the edges of the wound she caused them still jagged and bleeding. Not when she knows he’s still furious with her. He cares for her, he touches her gently and cares for her with unexpected diligence…but he’s still angry. The blood on the landing carpet speaks to that.

“If you’re hurting, it’s your own damn fault,” he says coolly. “Don’t expect me to be sympathetic about it.” He stares her down, and Vera is the first to look away. He’s right, of course, but that only makes Vera feel more impatient, more powerless. It’s her own fault that her ribs are aching, that her wrist still occasionally twinges in pain. It’s her fault that there’s still pain inside her, deep down below her womb; an ache that turns into a sharp, twisting agony if she makes an awkward movement. Her own fault. Yes, it’s her fault, but damn him for reminding her of it now, when she’s already feeling so helpless, so resentful about it all. 

“Screw you,” she mutters. It’s stupid and infantile and will do nothing but irritate him, but she can’t help herself. And it does, in some small way, make her feel a little better. Misery loves company, after all. She certainly doesn’t mind sharing her irritation with Philip. Two months ago she would have thought twice about doing so, but now…things are different now. He’s said three words to her that _make_ things different. He can’t take them back. He’s said it to her, more than once. Three words that make her safe. 

He’s said he loves her, and he promised not to leave her, and demanded that she trust him. 

Well, she’s trusting him now, though she doubts this was what he had in mind. But if he meant it, if he meant all of it, then a bad mood on Vera’s part won’t drive him away. So there’s surely no danger in letting it show. Surely there’s no harm in letting him be the target of her frustration. It may not end well; she knows that. But she doesn’t care. She’s fed up of this ache, fed up of being so feeble, fed up of it all. She can’t be bothered to hide it. And it’s a kind of trust, she tells herself. She’s trusting him with every part of her. Bad mood and all. He’d wanted her to trust him. He can’t object when she does so, has no right to object. Honesty and trust: that’s what he wanted, and it’s what she’s giving him.

“Charming,” he drawls. His temper is drawing in, the rage that’s been buried for three days finally resurfacing. “I’m just trying to help. It wouldn’t kill you to put your claws away and let me finish the job.”

“You shouldn’t have offered if you couldn’t do it,” she says scathingly. “A child could do better.”

“Well, just take care of yourself, then, if you don’t want me doing it!” He storms to the door, three long paces taking him out of the room. Vera makes a sound of strangled fury and reaches for the closest thing to throw at him. She grasps something, lifts it, flings it at his back without stopping to see what it is. 

The object flies through across the room and hits the middle of his back with a wet thunk. She stares, transfixed, as the sodden sponge falls down onto the floor, leaving a considerable damp patch on his shirt. There are drips on the floor, too, from the sponge. Heavy with water, it had sprayed a path across the floor as it hurtled through the air. 

Philip is very still. Vera covers her open mouth with her hand and _stares_. She can’t believe herself. She can’t believe she allowed her frustration to drive her to something so utterly…

So utterly _ridiculous_. Her breath catches in her throat. How _ridiculous_ , to throw a wet sponge at him, just because he’d lost patience with her. And now he’s standing there, facing away from her, dampness creeping across the back of his shirt, and the sponge on the floor behind him. She is struck by the absurd thought that at least his feet are bare: he has no socks to get wet. She watches as he inhales, his shoulder blades rising a little and then falling slowly. Tense, silent, the movement of his breathing the only sign that he’s alive. 

The wet patch spreads, water leeching through the cotton of his shirt.

Vera sniggers. She doesn’t mean to, but she can’t help it. It emerges from behind her hand, a sound too obviously mirthful to be disguised as anything else. It turns into a giggle, a girlish sound that usually she has to fake. This time it’s genuine, born from genuine amusement and with no lie or façade to hide behind. She sits in the bath and giggles. And when Philip turns, slowly, and faces her with a glower, the giggles turn into proper laughter. She can’t help it. Where normally that expression on his face would give her a twinge of misgiving, of alarm even, now she is too gripped with mirth to feel such twinges. It’s absurd. It’s all so absurd. Her own behaviour, his reaction, and the throwing of a sponge, all so pointless and ridiculous. 

And _oh_ , he’s glowering fiercely at her, but Vera leans back in the bath tub and holds her ribs and laughs. Her irritation, the tension that had built in her throughout her bath, has broken. The physical action has functioned as a valve, releasing the pressure of her feelings. It’s relief, as much as anything, that makes her laugh now. Relief from the tangled mess of frustration and impatience that has twisted her into knots. 

“You threw a sponge at me,” Philip says, incredulous. His accent has thickened, as it often does when he’s feeling some strong emotion. “You – I can’t believe you did that.” She can’t answer him; laugher chokes her words before they can take form. His scowl eases off, replaced by an expression of bewilderment. “And now you’re _laughing_ at me?” he demands. 

“Your b-back,” she laughs, “your back – is so – wet –,”

“You little –,” He breaks off, and strides back towards the bath. Vera has nowhere to hide from him; he puts a hand on either side of the bath and looms over her. Even now she can’t help laughing. It’s making her ribs ache, making her breathless, but she can’t stop it. Philip stares down at her, his eyes still dark and glinting his anger. She reaches up for him, clutches at his shirt collar with a wet hand. “Vera,” he warns, but she ignores him, pulls him closer and lifts herself up a little so she can kiss him. It’s wet and awkward, and her ribs complain about the position, but she doesn’t care. She kisses him through her laughter, and after a moment he huffs against her mouth and relaxes down into the embrace. Her mirth fades away. So, too, does the last of the frustration that burns beneath her skin. Her hair is still only half-combed, and the bath has hardly soothed her aches as she hoped it would, but as long as Philip is kissing her, it doesn’t matter.

He breaks the kiss to kneel down beside the bath, but then he comes back to her, mouth moving against hers hungrily. It’s the first time he’s kissed her like this since the day she came home from hospital. He’s been so annoyingly careful, his touches chaste and his kisses few and brief. This one won’t last long enough to turn into anything else, she knows. She can’t have sex yet. She hasn’t healed enough for that, and Philip has made it clear, without saying it in so many words, that he intends to follow medical advice on this matter. She would mind more, but she still feels too sore to do more than want him. 

So she isn’t surprised, and doesn’t complain, when Philip withdraws. His shirt is wet at the collar, where she’s holding it. His breathing is pleasingly ragged. She sinks back down into the bath and grimaces; the water is getting too cool to be quite comfortable. 

Philip looks down at her and shakes his head. “You’re such a pain in the neck sometimes,” he tells her, but he says it fondly, and there’s a smile tugging at his mouth. “Why do I put up with you?” 

The answer _almost_ trips off her tongue. ‘Because you love me,’ she doesn’t say. It’s the response he’s invited, but she can’t quite let herself give it to him. She can’t shrug it off, though. She can’t be flippant. Nobody else would put up with her; she knows that. Nobody else has ever loved her, not truly. Only Philip. 

Knowing he loves her, _trusting_ that he loves her, is a gift she must still learn to savour. She can’t respond to him as she might like to, but she can’t belittle it with a glib comment, either.

Instead, she gives him honesty. 

“I’ve never been a good patient,” she says. “I hate having to rely on other people.”

“What a shock,” Philip says dryly. “I never would have guessed.” Vera rolls her eyes at him, and he chuckles. But then his amusement fades a little. He cups her face in his hands and kisses her again, chastely. “It won’t be for much longer,” he murmurs against her lips, gentle and soft. Tender. She nods, just a little. “You’re healing every day.”

“I hate it,” she admits. 

“I know, darling.” His hands on her face tighten a little, almost uncomfortably. As if he’s holding tight to keep her here with him. She wonders what it had been like for him, finding her at the bottom of the stairs. She wonders what it would be like to see _him_ in such a battered, bloody condition. The thought makes her shiver. No, she thinks. No. She won’t stand for it. If anyone did that to him, she would hunt them down and make them pay. She’s seen him injured, seen him blood-stained and bruised, but she can imagine how she had looked, when Philip had found her. If she ever saw Philip so wounded, she would make someone _pay_ for it. “But Christ, Vera,” he murmurs, “it’s not been a month yet. The state of you when I found you…” 

Vera says nothing. There’s nothing she can say. Somebody else might try to reassure him, now. To remind him that she’s alive and healing and there’s no reason to fear she’ll regress. Somebody else might apologise for doing it, or at least for growing so irritable under his care. She can’t do that. And if she tries, if she fakes it the way the world would expect, Philip will just dismiss it. He’d know it to be a lie. All she can do, really, is try to bear his concern, his fear. Bear the irritation of being so frustratingly incapable. And bear it with better grace than she has in the last quarter of an hour. She isn’t a patient woman by nature, but she owes it to Philip to try. 

“It won’t be for much longer,” she echoes him. Her sprained wrist has healed; there’s no sign of any mark on her forehead. Her ribs will take a little longer, and her vagina and internal wounds, but he’s right. She’s lucky to be alive. “Philip,” she says suddenly, “I do know.” He tilts his head, curious. “Why you put up with me. I do know.” She knows why; she trusts it. He loves her. He loves her and won’t leave her, and there’s no danger in letting him see her vulnerabilities. There’s no danger with him. Not any longer. 

He kisses her mouth, then her forehead. “I do, too,” he says. “Now tell me what the hell I was doing wrong, so we can finish up and get you back to bed. The water’s getting cold.” He fishes around in the bath for the discarded comb, and Vera resigns herself to enduring his attempts once more.


End file.
